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Scientific American reports that an ongoing budget crunch at NASA may spell doom for the Spitzer Space Telescope, the agency having "taken stock of its fleet of orbiting astrophysics telescopes and decided which to save and which to shutter. Among the winners were the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Kepler planet-hunting telescope, which will begin a modified mission designed to compensate for the recent failure of two of its four stabilizing reaction wheels." Also from the SciAm article: "Until JWST comes online, no other telescope can approach Spitzer’s sensitivity in the range of infrared light it sees. The Senior Review report noted that Spitzer had the largest oversubscription of any NASA mission from 2013 to 2014, meaning that it gets about seven times more applications for observing time from scientists than it can accommodate. ...'The guest observing programs were very powerful because you get people from all over the world proposing ideas that maybe the people on the team wouldn’t have come up with,' [senior review panel chair Ben R.] Oppenheimer says. 'But it’s got to be paid for.'"

Yup, that's where our priorities are. And before the flames begin, let me say that here in the US we have the best government money can buy. I truly believe that; we're all very proud of ourselves here.

Besides, what's more important - bombing people who are not like us or exploring space? I think history has shown the answer (hint: even when we spent more on our space program it was only to beat them commie Ruskies to it after they put a satellite and a person into orbit).

But who wants to live in a world like that, when you, or your nation is alone, with all the other variety RIP disappearing? It's extremely hard to maintain balance in Civilization, and to win via a spaceship, because the natural tendency is for 1 to overpower all the others and emerge as the winner, just like in the business world there is a tendency for monopolies to arise and exterminate all the competition, if nothing else, through mergers with them, but when you go out into nature, you learn that there

In order to live you have to kill, you have to destroy, if nothing else, murder a carrot on your lunch plate, and sometimes you have to kill another human in self defense so that you live, but may decide not to kill 2 others and instead die, or be a kamikaze or suicide bomber killing many but protecting even many more of your nation vs one life of your own, it gets complicated, especially if you follow things like trying to sustain genetic variety and then you have one native american with one kid vs. 100 w

George Carlin has a "Bigger dick" theory of why it's important to bomb people who are not like us. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com] I think he did that gig before the war on Serbia, and we went to war with Serbia just to prove that white people are not racist, they can bomb white people too, with the same size dick, not just brown people, who have bigger dicks.

I loved COSMOS (ep.11) last week and how the civilizations, like ancient Sumaria, who valued military conquest ended up destroying themselves.

I thought religion was the drain of these civilizations, not the military. At least in case of Egypt, cutting off the X-box division otherwise known as Karnak, Inc. was one of the first business decisions by their Roman acquirers.

The pro-Moscow government in Georgia came about after Russia invaded it while Bush was in office. There's not really much we can do for non-NATO nations in Russia's backyard. There's a reason that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia joined NATO, and why Ukraine has considered it so often.

Guts our military? Are you fucking kidding me? Military spending is literally the highest it's ever been (even adjusted for inflation). In 2013 (2014 budget is even higher, but wikipedia gives comparisons by country for 2013), the US's military budget was $640 Billion. 2nd place was China at $188 Billion, and third place was Russia at $87.8 Billion. Yes, that's right, the US's military budget was over 3 times as much as 2nd place China's, and 7 times 3rd place Russia's. As ridiculous as that sounds, i

The B-1 was used in Iraq first during Operation Desert Fox and later during the 2003 invasion, and was also used in Kosovo and Afghanistan. The B-52, while still a very good bomber, is showing its age. While the Air Force still has it in the plans for another 30 years or so, it's not what you want to use should you have to go up against any serious air defenses, as they have to be neutralized first. Boeing has proposed several modernization ideas including new engines that would improve fuel efficiency a

The vast majority of US Representatives and Senators do not understand the distinction between the Spitzer and James Webb Missions. Nor should they, there primary job is taking care of local and internal politics here. However:

If a lot of people call/email/write in saying "Save Spitzer", they'll have their assistants do some research and run the numbers. Unless one of those assistants is a space/astronomy junkie, the result will come back the same for all parties. Spitzer is "up there" and "doing science".... James Webb costs more and is risky (it hasn't even launched yet)... so back Spitzer. It's the politically "safe" move.

Personally, I don't want to see that happen. If we have to sacrifice Spitzer (and even other projects) to get James Webb... so be it. Astronomy is, after all, all about the very long game.

Oh, you didn't hear of any planned terrorist attacks after 9-11? Well, Mr. Deep Thinker, do you suppose that it didn't happen because Pvt. Smith and Pvt. Johnson were OVER THERE blowing the sh** out of UBL's training camps and various minions?

As for abolishing the IRS, there are OTHER things to tax besides income. We did it before 1913, and can do it again. It would result in an economic boom of Biblical proportions. The mast great leap forward was from 1865 - 1900, known as the gilded age, when the

Are you aware that federal income taxes were collected long before the case (Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust) that basically triggered the adoption of the 16th Amendment? They go back to 1861. The issue in Pollock was not that the income tax was unconstitutional (the income tax on wages was decided unanimously to be constitutional in 1880 and held to be an excise tax in Pollock), but that taxes on income derived from property (rental income, stock dividends, etc.) were direct taxes (as opposed to indirect taxes on wages) and so had to be apportioned by state populations. It then spent the next decade doing contortions trying to fit various taxes challenged after the Pollock ruling as excise taxes so as to not deprive the federal government of revenue from many other sources.

The 16th Amendment merely allows taxes collected on all income, whatever the source, to not be apportioned by state populations, taking the issue out of the courts' hands completely. Repealing the amendment wouldn't end the income tax or the IRS, but instead justify a larger bureaucracy to ensure that income from direct taxes was apportioned properly, or else a rush to the courts to challenge pretty much every tax and a resumption of the judicial contortions to keep them in place.

And you really should get up to date on your recent history. While I'm not sad to see Saddam Hussein gone, there were no unconventional weapons found, save for a few old artillery shells buried more than a decade before. He really had dismantled his programs, but tried to make it look like maybe he didn't in case Iran got the bright idea of starting a new fight.

It was determined that a single anthrax spore that took to the wind in DC traveled to Baltimore and killed an elederly woman during the attack by that nut-job using weaponized anthrax from one of our defense labs. The stuff is absolutely, stunningly deadly.

And, this, my fellow nerds, is why we are at war with science in this country.

Yes, it is to prevent the next anthrax attack. Because what else could we possibly do to combat terrorist attacks by our very own scientists? Nothing, I say. It is war, or we just surrender. You wouldn't want to surrender, would you? Why, then we'd be no better than the damned French! [wikipedia.org]

Me? I'm going to DARPA to get some funding so we can win this war! The first thing I need is a telescope -- to show the people just how wrong

A few little notes: a huge (I'm talking a whole building, possibly a stadium size) rotating (at the correct speed, 9.8 m2/s= g=omega^2 x r) metal cylinder could provide artificial gravity, by centrifugal force, when you walk on the inside surface. If it's triple walled steel or titanium, maybe some aluminum too, with many relatively small cylinder units connected, then when a tiny meteor hits going 20 miles per second, it won't leak suddenly if there are vacuum spacings between the walls

It seems that a private consortium could operate the instrument, given its oversubscription ratio, and thereby have enough funding to run both the subscription selection process and the ground station equipment (or build their own), and that the real problem here is that NASA is in between the people who want to use the instrument and the instrument itself, and are using it as a means to blackmail outrage out of the people who want to use the instrument, in order to obtain more funding for NASA.

Am I missing something? Why, other than they have the code keys, is NASA involved, once the instrument is up there in orbit, so long as there are parties willing to pay the freight for the ground stations in exchange for observation slots? I know it's a little harsh to turn around and say "NASA, you're fired as caretakers of this instrument", but is that any less harsh than shutting it down so that no one has use of it, unless they get the funds they want?

You do not understand how these telescope missions are funded, or, apparently that it costs millions simply to keep a space telescope running once it is up. The scientists who want to use Spitzer do not, and can not, pay for it out of pocket. There are no parties willing or able to pay for anything related to telescope operations, other than NASA itself. The oversubscription indicates its scientific usefulness and relevance, not some economic market model potential.

No, NASA - aka the USG - is the sugar daddy to the astro researchers. There hasn't even been thought to seeing what it would take to operate a project independently. In fact, maybe if these projects were done privately from start to finish they would not see multi billion dollar cost overruns time after time.

Granted, you are an AC dolt. This is not so much about capitalism as it is about philantrhopy and making use of an open market to reach the goals that are set by those organizations. Put another way - Balmer, Buffet, Gates et al all could independently finance any of the NASA observatory projects. Do you seriously think they would tolerate the mismanagement, cost overruns and general stupidity that has plagued so many of those? It is not that NASA can't ultimately get the job done - they do - it is th

You do not understand how these telescope missions are funded, or, apparently that it costs millions simply to keep a space telescope running once it is up.

The major sunk costs are getting the bird in the air. Once it's up there, it's about ground facilities to talk to the thing, and the costs are all administrative, unless you are also giving out data analysis grants that are perhaps better funded by those who want the data in the first place. Either way, even if it's a grant, it's an NSF grant at that point, and it's not a NASA budget line item.

The scientists who want to use Spitzer do not, and can not, pay for it out of pocket. There are no parties willing or able to pay for anything related to telescope operations, other than NASA itself.

To be fair, the instrument itself is fairly broken (it ran out of liquid Helium half way through May 2009), and i

Maybe NASA could start begging for money like PBS and Wikipedia do, and email photographs of latest captures to donors as thanks, and if lots of people donate a few dollars, that could add up to a few hundred million, and help keep stuff in operation, even if not enough to create and launch new telescopes.

The Chinese may look smaller and weaker, fragile than whites and blacks, but they built the Great Wall, and also the US Trans Continental Railroads west portion, through the grueling treacherous mountains, the hard part, the eastern portion through flat terrain being piece of cake comparatively. They are good at an love to build large projects with backbreaking work, and they have the stamina to accomplish them. They are like masochists when it comes to working, pervertedly getting off on the pain and suffe

Every time NASA has a budget crunch, they look for the most popular program they have an suggest that's the first one to go. How many times was the Hubble mission in jeopardy? I'm all for giving NASA more money, it's one of the few things government does that doesn't involve screwing one group of people or another, but I've heard them crying wolf far to often to come running this time.

No. NASA followed the ranking of facilities in the Senior Review report that were set by an external non-NASA advisory panel composed of prominent scientists.

Although scientifically Spitzer was rated as excellent and unique, given its somewhat lower ranking in the report and the comparatively large cost of the extended mission, it is vulnerable to shutdown.

NASA has said in the official response to the Senior Review: "The Spitzer project is invited to respond with a request for a budget augmentation to condu

I find it extremely sad that the US has recently lost the ability to conduct human spaceflight. I also find it extremely sad that the funding for NASA is still under threat. I don't know what to say really... I hope the future exploration of mankind doesn't depend on countries with questionable human right record like Russia and China.

I hope the future exploration of mankind doesn't depend on countries with questionable human right record like Russia and China.

It always has. The US only developed its space programme so quickly because it wanted better ICBMs and got into a somewhat imaginary race with Russia to the moon. I'm not saying its a bad thing, only that conflict with Russia was the major driving force.

The only way I can see NASA being well funded again is if China starts sending people to the moon. They don't have to land, just orbiting should be enough to light that fire.

I agree the space race was an ICBM development/demonstrator program, but that means China going to the moon will not re-ignite it, since we have no need to re-develop ICBMs. Even if China beat us to putting a man on Mars, it wouldn't have any direct security implications.

"The US only developed its space programme so quickly because it wanted better ICBMs". The other way around. The first space launch boosters, both US and Soviet, were almost all military ballistic missiles first. First US satellite was launched aboard an uprated and modified Redstone IRBM with upper stages stuck on. First US manned mission was launched aboard a Redstone IRBM. First US manned orbital mission was launched aboard an Atlas ICBM. First US two-man missions (Gemini) were launched aboard a Ti

Manned space flight still takes up a huge chunk of NASA's budget [nasa.gov]. $3 billion for ISS operations alone in 2014, a lot more than the $1.3 billion allocated to astrophysics (from what I can tell, roughly half of that $1.3 billion is development of the JWST).

Anyhow, the U.S. didn't lose manned spaceflight capability because of budget problems at NASA. It lost it because our Senators inserted too many provisions requiring NASA to use certain designs and/or parts contractors. It was engineering design by ac

Wrong. Complete destruction of individual freedom [slashdot.org] happened on March 1, 1781. Once government is established there can be no freedom. Everyone is either a tyrant ("government employee") or a slave.

NASA officially says - 'Without a budget boost from Congress or cost savings within the Spitzer project, money for the mission will run out Sept. 30 and NASA will decommission the telescope beginning this fall. Spitzer received $16.5 million to operate in fiscal year 2014, which ends Sept. 30. Helou said the initial proposal considered by NASA's senior review called for a reduced operating budget of $15.35 million in fiscal year 2015.'

This over subscribed for observation time mission that cost billions to l

"space exploration just seems to drop right out of the equation, doesn't it?"
That is the crux of the argument. At this point in time, large portions of the population just do not care about space exploration or research because there are more tangible topics that dominate their thinking.

"space exploration just seems to drop right out of the equation, doesn't it?"
That is the crux of the argument. At this point in time, large portions of the population just do not care about space exploration or research because there are more tangible topics that dominate their thinking.

Such as having food on the table every day. That's a constant topic at the city kennel for animals, because there is always more animals than money to feed them. And animals that don't find an owner adopting them sooner or later get put to death. Those that do get adopted, do so being neutered. It's like the right to freely breed and the right to food on the table are human rights that should apply even to animals like cats, unfortunately there is no amount of money in the entire universe that's able to kee

I think of whatever is left over after supporting the SS of elderly over 65 (that's a lot of baby boomers, and hospital charges are out of control), 80% of my taxes should be spent on military (and I include NASA with the military here), 5% on roads, with the remaining 15% on miscellaneous, while things like education can be done by private schools (I used to be a big fan of public education). Instead of welfare with people under 65 (optionally 60 for women) sitting home twirling their thumbs, everyone need

Jefferson had this idea that the "yeoman farmer" is the backbone of a democracy, and democracy cannot be trusted to city dwellers, because they are not self sufficient, not independent voters, their vote is controlled by those who can give them a job. A city, and urbanized population is undemocratic at its core, because of basic necessities, dependence on the elite for those basic necessities.

Jefferson had this idea that the "yeoman farmer" is the backbone of a democracy, and democracy cannot be trusted to city dwellers, because they are not self sufficient, not independent voters, their vote is controlled by those who can give them a job. A city, and urbanized population is undemocratic at its core, because of basic necessities, dependence on the elite for those basic necessities.

Jefferson's idea of the "yeoman farmer" was the slave holding Southern plantation owner, being one himself, not the moderate family farmer you might be thinking of. Jefferson was more attuned to old style feudalism than democracy.

:a person who owns and cultivates a small farm;
specifically : one belonging to a class of English freeholders below the gentry

The gentry is the nobility. So a yeoman is a small farmer, a free man, not a serf living on a noble landlord's property, and a lot of farmers in the US South were large farmers, with large plantations. Washington was a yeoman, when the war for independence was over, he told the others he was going back to his farm. Kin

By the way there used to be a tradition of tricking people on slashdot to go to goatse.cx, and you can do a google image search on "goatse.cx lolcat" for some giggles on that gere theme. Some of the things some people do, if not in reality, with photoshop, I tell ya.

By the way some people who can exist off the land without any government welfare support are the Mursi tribe of Ethiopia, cattle being their main resource limitation to their population, as men have to buy their wives with cattle, before they can marry, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com], while the bushmen of the Kalahari desert in Namibia/Botswana used to be similarly self sufficient in the desert for 25,000 years, but now that they learned of modern ways to live, they don't want to go back to the old ways,

People seem to feel that money spent on exploration has no valuable return! Yet they spend countless billions on food stamps and welfare, yet these also have no tangible return.They lose sight of the fact that 99% of the money spent on exploration is for the purchase of items made on earth and represents the labor expended to produce whatever item.

Take gold - it is free in the earth, but we pay the miners to drill, dig, break rocks, extract etc, and ever stage is almost totally for wages to deal with a raw

Unfortunately, "they" IS NASA. See for example http://climate.nada.gov/ [nada.gov] , where you'll tabloid-style headlines like "Unstoppable Decline". Unfortunately, since NASA is part of the executive branch, they ultimately answer to the president. If they want to keep their projects going , they have to keepthe boss happy. The boss like stories about global warming^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H climate change, and the boss, Barak "my Muslim faith" Obama likes stories of happy Muslims, so NASA gives him climate change and M

NASA head Bolden told Al Jazeerathat when he became the NASA administrator, President Obama charged him with three things: "One, he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good"

So yeah, according to the head of NASA, the foremost mission of NASA under Barak

I'm all for engaging the Muslims to feel good about America. In America we have comparatively good racial harmony compared to the muslims bombing the fuck out of each other over being sunny or shia, or even not being related, they are so racist, even their names goes ibn, son of who, they track heredity very closely, and they got severe racism issues over it within their own kind, let alone with people that look different than them. A lot of them do live in the desert, and in the desert it's impossible to l

That's an interesting post. At first, I thought it was basically anti-Muslim, but then I got to parts such as:

> To them women are not for "new booty" fun when you got bored of the same old same old, but to have children with and raise a family, actually raising their own kids and instead of having baby daddy's and baby mommas.

AActually, that's kind of a balanced view - blunt and not politically correct, but not anti-anyone.

Of course, the question is, is it right that _NASA's_ #1 goal should be reaching